There are 184 engineering colleges in NCR. Several call themselves as Universities. Including many run by the govt. Some like Gautam Budh University have really nice campuses.
In one regional planning document, it was noted that around 25% of India’s universities and 28% of its ~39,000 colleges are located across the four main NCR states.
But most of them are going to fail. And probably within 5 years. It is not about Galgotia or about GLA or about Shiv Nadar. It is a genre issue.
Will Artificial General Intelligence destroy universities immediately ? Probably not. But it may destroy the version of universities we are used to. And that is probably all the Universities which exist.
If Artificial General Intelligence becomes real, the first casualty won’t be research labs or campuses. It will be the lecture.
The traditional model where a professor stands in front of 200 students and delivers standardized content will become obsolete the moment every student has access to a 24/7 super-tutor that explains quantum mechanics, constitutional law, or macroeconomics better than any human ever could — personalized, patient, and infinitely adaptive.
Ai can teach English to an illiterate villager. Can the University do that ?
But universities were never just about information. They are credentialing systems. They are signaling devices in labor markets. They are social sorting mechanisms. They are networks. They are places where legitimacy is manufactured. But would that have takers at current revenue levels. They are hardly non profits. Their balance sheets look more like rackets.
A student does not attend university only to learn finance. They attend to signal capability, to build relationships, to access alumni networks, to gain institutional credibility. An AI can teach you corporate law in six weeks. It cannot grant you the social capital of a trusted institutional brand. But brands rise and fall quickly in a digital world.
The more interesting disruption will happen in research. Routine literature reviews, incremental papers, low-impact publications — much of that could be automated. The “publish or perish” treadmill may collapse under its own automation. What survives will be deep experimentation, frontier inquiry, and high-trust validation.
In an AGI world, knowledge becomes abundant. Judgment becomes scarce.
Universities that pivot toward cultivating judgment, ethics, leadership, interdisciplinary synthesis, and real-world experimentation will thrive. Those that continue selling static syllabi and exam preparation may struggle.Liberal arts may last longer than others. As would those migrating to NEP fully.
The printing press did not destroy universities. The internet did not destroy universities. They forced adaptation. AGI would be a far larger shock — but history suggests institutions evolve rather than vanish.
Not all. Just some.
Which ones will make it is hard.
But most won’t make it is certain.
